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Nadeem F. Paracha

Nadeem F. Paracha

Naya Daur

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SMOKERS’ CORNER: THE MYTH OF 'WESTERNISATION'

The notion that the West has tried to impose Westernisation and secularism in Muslim regions in the past few decades is largely

previous day 70

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: THE ILLUSION oF AUTHENTICITY

The term ‘authentic’ has evolved from a Romantic ideal into marketing gimmicks and aesthetic trends. In many cases, both at home

15.12.2024 30

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: THE EVOLUTION OF PARTIES

Across history, political parties have had to learn to balance their incipient ideology with pragmatism in order to ensure mainst

08.12.2024 40

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: RELIGIOUS NATIONALISM AND ITS DISCONTENTS

'Donald Trump and the Rise of Christian Nationalists’ was the title of an essay published in August this year on the academic website The...

01.12.2024 70

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: READING INTO POLITICS

Last week, the veteran political analyst Najam Sethi claimed that the jailed Pakistani politician Imran Khan was utilising contents from the...

24.11.2024 100

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: IDEALS AND IDEOLOGIES

From the day Pakistan came into being, ideas formulated by ‘modernist’ scholars such as Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and Allama Muhammad Iqbal have been...

17.11.2024 60

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: THE NEW MANICHAEANS

Just days before this year’s US presidential election, when I was wrapping up my interviews with a cross-section of voters in some US states for a...

10.11.2024 40

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: THE POLITICS OF ‘ANTI-POLITICS’

After his ouster from power in 2022, Imran Khan decided to roar back to power by operating from outside the country’s mainstream political paradigm....

03.11.2024 20

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: MISGUIDED OUTRAGE

On many occasions, it just takes a single incident to trigger riots. The incident can be actual, or overly exaggerated and, in some cases, entirely...

27.10.2024 40

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: MANAGING CIVIL UNREST

Studies show that incidents of civil unrest have been increasing across the world. Yet, there are also those who are of the view that the police are...

20.10.2024 70

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: THE DANGEROUS LEADER DISORDER

The military-establishment (ME) and the government have decided to call Imran Khan a ‘fitna’ [conspiratorial, divisive, violent]. To most other...

13.10.2024 30

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: SAFEGUARDING SINDH

Last week, protests erupted in Umerkot, a city located at the edge of the Thar Desert in Sindh. The protests were held to condemn the extrajudicial...

06.10.2024 40

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: THE PARADOX OF TOLERANCE

In his 1945 book, Open Society and its Enemies, the Austrian philosopher Karl Popper described a paradox, which he called the “paradox of...

29.09.2024 50

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES

The British historian John Dalberg-Acton described stupidity as “a corruption of knowledge.” This may mean information or knowledge that has been...

22.09.2024 40

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: THE DRAMA TRIANGLE

Most storylines in myths, films, TV series and novels largely revolve around three characters: the hero, the villain and the victim. In 1968, the...

15.09.2024 30

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: THE WRITERS OF HISTORY

History is written by victors’ is a phrase often used by people. But most historians detest it. They see it as an impulsive outcome of...

08.09.2024 50

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: THE OUTrAGE INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

The ‘angry young man’ (AYM) was a character-type first introduced by some British writers in the 1950s. In fact, it was the British media that...

01.09.2024 60

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: NARRATIVES OF DECLINE

Ever since 2014, politics in Pakistan has largely been about a battle of narratives. This is nothing new or something peculiar to Pakistan. But such...

25.08.2024 100

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: FEAR AND LOATHING IN BRITAIN

From July 30, deadly riots erupted in Britain when three young girls were stabbed to death in a quiet seaside town of the country. Britain’s...

18.08.2024 40

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: THE MIRROR ARGUMENT

In his autobiography Mein Kampf [My Struggle], published nine years before he came to power, the German Nazi leader Adolf Hitler concluded that Jews...

11.08.2024 30

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: COURTING CONSITUTIONAl CHAOS

According to the German professor of law Ulrich K. Preuss, there are four ‘ideal types’ of constitutions. Preuss’ study focuses on what nature...

04.08.2024 60

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: THE PLAGUE OF POLARISATION

Societies in multiple countries are suffering from one of the most serious illnesses that can badly damage democracy. That illness is polarisation. ...

28.07.2024 60

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: PAKISTAN'S 'USEFUL IDIOTS'

Numerous books have been written on Islam in Pakistan. So, two years ago, I set out to write a book on the history of liberalism in Pakistan. It is...

21.07.2024 100

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: BRANDING THE BRANDS

In 2017, Pepsi aired a commercial in which the American model Kendall Jenner breaks away from a fashion shoot to join a protest rally. She is then...

14.07.2024 70

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE

The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) has a history of voting against parliamentary bills that look to enhance or safeguard women and minority rights. To...

07.07.2024 50

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: FAITH AND THE ECONOMY

Lee Kuan Yew, the former prime minister of Singapore and the architect of the tiny country’s giant economy, first visited Pakistan in 1988....

30.06.2024 80

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: THE MADNESS OF CROWDS

In November 1979, around 600 armed men seized the Grand Mosque in Makkah. The group was led by Juhayman al-Otaybi, who wished to kick-start an...

23.06.2024 100

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: THE FALSE IDOLS OF PAKISTAN CRICKET

Last week, when the Pakistan cricket team suffered two ‘humiliating’ defeats in this year’s T20 Cricket World Cup, a large number of angry fans...

16.06.2024 50

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: SHATTERING THE OVERTON WINDOW

According to the veteran political analyst Najam Sethi, last week’s controversial post on the social media platform X by the chief of the Pakistan...

09.06.2024 50

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: THE POPULARITY OF POPULISM

Studies on populism witnessed a manifold increase when Donald Trump unexpectedly won the 2016 American presidential election. Initially, most of the...

02.06.2024 100

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: THE AGE OF PSYCHOPOLITICS

There’s a consistent pattern with vlogs and podcasts on YouTube. The more they succeed in finding larger audiences, the more they become about the...

26.05.2024 90

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: PAKISTAN'S POPULIST JUDGES

The Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP), Justice Qazi Faez Isa, often goes out of his way to not provide interpretations of constitutional texts....

19.05.2024 100

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: KHAN AND THE GENERALS

In May 2023, a recorded phone call — allegedly between the mother-in-law of the former Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Umar Atta Bandial, and the...

12.05.2024 100

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: HISTORY IN THE 'POST-TRUTH ERA'

The past is mostly an invention that the present uses to secure an illusion that keeps lies in power. To the British novelist George Orwell, “Those...

05.05.2024 100

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: REALITY VERSUS PERCEPTION

In 1989, the essay ‘The End of History’ by the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama created quite a stir. He wrote that liberal democracy...

28.04.2024 70

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: PERNICIOUS POLARISATION

Currently, one of the most frequently used words in political discourses is the term ‘polarisation’. Recent studies demonstrate that a majority of...

21.04.2024 80

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: WHO ARE 'THE AWAAM?

Like politicians, political commentators, too, frequently use the word ‘awaam’ [the masses]. I once asked a political analyst what he meant by the...

14.04.2024 40

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: HEROES IN AN UNHEROIC AGE

The German writer J Wolfgang Goethe once quipped, “Blessed is the nation that doesn’t need heroes.” As if to expand upon Goethe’s words, the...

07.04.2024 20

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: IN SEARCH OF THE 'NEW MAN'

Till the 1960s, the idea of engineering an ideal society was an earnest endeavour. It did not draw the kind of cynical ridicule or even dread that it...

31.03.2024 30

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: FOSTERING 'PUNJABIYAT'

In 1975, a conference on the history of Sindh was organised in Karachi. It was treated as an important event by the then prime minister of Pakistan,...

24.03.2024 20

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: THE PITFALLS OF 'POLITAINMENT'

A lot has been theorised and analysed in the last decade about the rise of populism across the world. Political scientists and sociologists have put...

17.03.2024 40

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: MAULANA FAZl'S MEN IN SINDH

Recently, when hundreds of workers belonging to the Deobandi Sunni Islamist party, the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam–Fazal (JUI-F) — protesting against the...

10.03.2024 70

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: THE MARKETPLACE OF FAITHS

In 1987, the American sociologists Rodney Stark and William S. Bainbridge formulated a ‘Religious Market Theory.’ The theory is a critique of the...

03.03.2024 30

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: PERFORMATIVE PROVOCATEURS

Back in the late 1980s, a bunch of guys and I started to publish a ‘revolutionary’ newsletter. We were all in our early twenties and some of us...

25.02.2024 40

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: RIDING THE EMOTIONAL VOTE

The so-called ‘emotional vote’ is something that, for almost a decade now, has been increasingly attracting the attention of political scientists....

18.02.2024 40

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: ESCAPING THE HYBRID CYCLE

Pakistan has been stuck in a ‘vicious cycle’ in which the military establishment (ME) constantly intervenes to aid the election of a prime...

11.02.2024 40

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: THE VIGOURS OF RIGGING

In Pakistan, the moment someone mentions the word ‘rigging’, the first thing that comes to mind is the image of suspicious looking people stuffing...

04.02.2024 20

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: THE FIGOURS OF RIGGING

In Pakistan, the moment someone mentions the word ‘rigging’, the first thing that comes to mind is the image of suspicious looking people stuffing...

04.02.2024 30

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: THE RETURN OF THE ROMANTICS

On January 13, a three-member bench of the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Qazi Faez Isa, delivered a verdict in favour of...

28.01.2024 40

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

SMOKERS’ CORNER: THE WAY WE VOTE

There are multiple theories on voting behaviour. The three most common are the rational choice theory, issue voting and the valence issue concept....

21.01.2024 20

Dawn (Magazines)

Nadeem F. Paracha

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